Brokeback Mountain

[Flasch186]

I dont know why, but Im feeling a banning or boxing coming out of this thread suddenly. anyone think so?

[Subby]

Originally Posted by JeffNights

Well America has spoken, Brokeback Mountain made approx, 2.4 million in its opening weekend. Apparently two faggots going at it wasnt as big as a great idea as the studio hoped eh?

Thank you for reminding me that blatantly mindless hatred is alive and well in the world.

Good to see that working out for you.

[cthomer5000]

Originally Posted by JeffNights

Well America has spoken, Brokeback Mountain made approx, 2.4 million in its opening weekend. Apparently two faggots going at it wasnt as big as a great idea as the studio hoped eh?

It's only in limited release and made by far the most money per screen of any movie this weekend.

[mauchow]

Originally Posted by cthomer5000

It's only in limited release and made by far the most money per screen of any movie this weekend.

Yeah, really. He must've done a lot of research to come up with that. Genius.

Next week I imagine it will still have a tough time going up against Narnia, Kong, Dick and Jane, Producers, even with 1500 theatres. It'll still do well though.. I'd say 8-10 mill.

[Desnudo]

Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue

While there will always be inter-play between nature (genetics) and nurture (environment), I am more of a nature guy. Off the cuff I say 80/20 or so. I should have qualified what I said. I don't think we come out "stamped as irrevocably one or the other", but I think we do come out with a strong predisposition to one or the other. Like I said, 80/20 or thereabouts.

I would hope the instinct to reproduce would be genetic and is a survival trait. Otherwise, why would we bother? It's probably a hell of a lot easier to find a rest stop than it is to talk a woman into bed.

[JeffNights]

Originally Posted by Subby

Thank you for reminding me that blatantly mindless hatred is alive and well in the world.

Good to see that working out for you.

Oh, so I express an opinion and its now mindless hatred?

Listen no problem, I heard on the radio ad that the movie opened this weekend, and then saw the box office top ten. Now, I do apologize for not really being all into the movie hardcore to do research on the subject.

[Flasch186]

Originally Posted by JeffNights

Oh, so I express an opinion and its now mindless hatred?

Listen no problem, I heard on the radio ad that the movie opened this weekend, and then saw the box office top ten. Now, I do apologize for not really being all into the movie hardcore to do research on the subject.

I think your statement wasnt opinion, you stated that it was a failure and the facts, so far, dont bear that out...so thats what got killed. your assinine opinion is yours to be proud of.

[JeffNights]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

I think your statement wasnt opinion, you stated that it was a failure and the facts, so far, dont bear that out...so thats what got killed. your assinine opinion is yours to be proud of.

My opinion is that I disagree with homosexuality, and its assinine? Well hey, at least I do have plenty of company.

[Desnudo]

Originally Posted by JeffNights

My opinion is that I disagree with homosexuality, and its assinine? Well hey, at least I do have plenty of company.

Has anyone ever mentioned that your user name would make an excellent porn name?

[JeffNights]

Originally Posted by Desnudo

Has anyone ever mentioned that your user name would make an excellent porn name?

Not yet....But i'm always listening.

[MrBigglesworth]

Originally Posted by JeffNights

Not yet....But i'm always listening.

Your username would make an excellent porn name.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by Desnudo

I would hope the instinct to reproduce would be genetic and is a survival trait. Otherwise, why would we bother? It's probably a hell of a lot easier to find a rest stop than it is to talk a woman into bed.

I totally agree, which is another reason why being gay (having a sexual preference for someone of the same sex) is so much different than having a preference for small tits or large. At the very basic level homosexuality is going against the genetic instinct to reproduce which is powerful a biological force as there is.

[Axxon]

Originally Posted by JeffNights

Oh, so I express an opinion and its now mindless hatred?

Listen no problem, I heard on the radio ad that the movie opened this weekend, and then saw the box office top ten. Now, I do apologize for not really being all into the movie hardcore to do research on the subject.

Well, if the opinion is mindless hatred then...yeah.

You even admit that you didn't put any thought into it but simply stated it with absolutely no research so that would qualify as mindless right? The opinion forced the reaction not any thought about it. It was knee jerk as you so noted.

Then the actual quoted "Apparently two faggots going at it wasnt as big as a great idea as the studio hoped eh?" doesn't sound like a neutral observation. It oozes hatred whether it was your intention or not.

So, I'd say mindless hatred fits the post pretty well.

[mauchow]

Originally Posted by Axxon

So, I'd say mindless hatred fits the post pretty well.

:exhaggeration: Nooooo... I say we ignore the guy.

[Joe Canadian]

Originally Posted by JeffNights

My opinion is that I disagree with homosexuality, and its assinine? Well hey, at least I do have plenty of company.

No, your opinion is "mindless hatred." There's alot of people on this board that hold the opinion that homosexuality is wrong... they don't make statements like yours.

[Axxon]

Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue

I totally agree, which is another reason why being gay (having a sexual preference for someone of the same sex) is so much different than having a preference for small tits or large. At the very basic level homosexuality is going against the genetic instinct to reproduce which is powerful a biological force as there is.

Homosexuality has been seen in other species though. They don't have the ability to think but merely act instinctively. It happens.

Since animals can't conceive the concept of homosexuality how can their homosexuality be learned behavior? Who was the first of their species to learn it, how did they learn it and how do they teach it to others? I don't get it.

Now, maybe like some have said, homosexuality is not an all or nothing choice but rather a scale. This sounds about right and if it's the case and you have both tendencies then indeed you must make a choice which preference you follow but again, I don't think the choice is to be gay or not but rather whether to practice a preference or not. Wanting to influence that choice in people you care about then makes sense though I personally don't give a rip enough to actually make the effort with anyone I know.

I don't think we can simply say though that procreation is a survival trait and that homosexuality isn't. Survival of a species takes into account many factors and overpopulation can kill a species too. Homosexuality always kinda seemed to me to be population control and as we keep crowding the planet things that control population like earthquakes, wars, homosexuality etc all serve the purpose of controlling our population are good things but of these mentioned, I'd think homosexuality is the most innocuous.

On an individual level though it isn't that easy. Each individual wants to procreate and spread his legacy to future generations and if your child is homosexual then it ain't happening and this is troubling since that's the individual survival drive. That's why I can understand where some of the harsh reactions come from.

I don't think the overall drive is necessarily hate, it's fear ( which IMHO most hatred comes from but that's another issue altogether ) and fear creates some strong reactions.

Anyway, just a couple of thoughts on the issue.

[timmynausea]

Originally Posted by Axxon

Homosexuality has been seen in other species though. They don't have the ability to think but merely act instinctively. It happens.

Since animals can't conceive the concept of homosexuality how can their homosexuality be learned behavior? Who was the first of their species to learn it, how did they learn it and how do they teach it to others? I don't get it.

I can't speak for all animals, but I'm pretty sure my cats are getting it from watching Christopher Lowell.

[Axxon]

Originally Posted by timmynausea

I can't speak for all animals, but I'm pretty sure my cats are getting it from watching Christopher Lowell.

Your cat's are gay?

OH THE HUMANITY!!! Wait, not that exactly.... anyway, how does it feel to fail as a parent?

[timmynausea]

Originally Posted by Axxon

Your cat's are gay?

OH THE HUMANITY!!! Wait, not that exactly.... anyway, how does it feel to fail as a parent?

It was weird at first, but before I knew it I was making sassy comments during Project Runway right along with them.

[PilotMan]

Couple of thoughts:

1) How many movies about lesbians have come out and why didn't they get critical acclaim?

2) Simple soultion to this whole thing. If you have no interest in the plot of the movie, don't go see it.

Now you can stop worring about it, and go back to what you were doing.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

By the way ...

Which one is gayer, a Wyoming Cowboy or a Dallas Cowboy?

OR

(This might be my stupidest post ever but I couldn't help myself. It's Troy Aikman... with a dumb look on his face... holding a sausage... and looking very happy- there's just no contest *snicker* oh, and don't let Jeeber see this one)

SI

[Raiders Army]

Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue

I totally agree, which is another reason why being gay (having a sexual preference for someone of the same sex) is so much different than having a preference for small tits or large. At the very basic level homosexuality is going against the genetic instinct to reproduce which is powerful a biological force as there is.

Is it the genetic instinct to reproduce or the genetic instinct to get your rocks off?

Seriously, I think it's the latter as opposed to the former. From what I understand, both heterosexuals and homosexuals both masturbate. That has nothing to do with reproducing (unless you count practice, heh heh).

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by Raiders Army

Is it the genetic instinct to reproduce or the genetic instinct to get your rocks off?

Seriously, I think it's the latter as opposed to the former. From what I understand, both heterosexuals and homosexuals both masturbate. That has nothing to do with reproducing (unless you count practice, heh heh).

It's reproduction. I don't think those salmon swim all the upstream only to die of exhaustion just for a circle jerk.

[Honolulu_Blue]

For those of you obsessed with the box office performance of this movie...

'Brokeback' Breaks Records
Far more surprising to box-office watchers than the tame debut of King Kong over the weekend was the performance of Brokeback Mountain, which packed the 69 theaters in 21 cities that it played in. In such cities as Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles, the take was more than $70,000 at each theater. Nationally, it averaged a sensational $34,194 per theater, which Daily Variety said was a record for any film released on more than 50 screens (except for those released in IMAX theaters, where ticket prices are substantially higher). Generally described as a gay cowboy romance, the film reportedly played well in some smaller test markets. Today's (Monday) Los Angeles Times observed that the film fared well in the "closely watched" city of Plano, TX. Jack Foley, Focus Films' distribution chief, told the Times that its debut there "was a revelation about the accessibility of this movie. ... This is not gay-dependent. Attendance at those theaters indicates the film has the attention of suburban moviegoers."

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by Raiders Army

Is it the genetic instinct to reproduce or the genetic instinct to get your rocks off?

I believe from the standpoint of natural selection, the idea is that the latter exists to guarantee the former.

[revrew]

Originally Posted by MrBigglesworth

Your username would make an excellent porn name.

And this line comes to us from....MrBigglesworth.

[Subby]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

Couple of thoughts:
1) How many movies about lesbians have come out and why didn't they get critical acclaim?

Bound received a lot of acclaim when it came out. As did Mulholland Falls.

edit: make that Mulholland Drive

[Flasch186]

Bound was better than average and I hate joe Pantoliano (The TV SERIES KISS O DEATH)

[PilotMan]

Well guys I have a dilemma. I really have no desire to see this movie. None at all. Just not something that I really want to see. However, I was talking to my wife about the movie. She had never heard of it, and I told her that it was a story about gay cowboys and that it had Heath Ledger playing one of the parts. Her reply caught me a bit off guard. She said, " I don't know, I might get pretty hot watching Heath Ledger make out with another guy."

We both had a good laugh and I began to wonder if maybe I should go see it afterall. Would this be enough to get you to see a movie that you really didn't want to see?

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

Well guys I have a dilemma. I really have no desire to see this movie. None at all. Just not something that I really want to see. However, I was talking to my wife about the movie. She had never heard of it, and I told her that it was a story about gay cowboys and that it had Heath Ledger playing one of the parts. Her reply caught me a bit off guard. She said, " I don't know, I might get pretty hot watching Heath Ledger make out with another guy."

We both had a good laugh and I began to wonder if maybe I should go see it afterall. Would this be enough to get you to see a movie that you really didn't want to see?

If you don't want to see it, don't. Give her a ticket, let her go see Brokeback Mountain and you go see King Kong or Syriana or the Chonic(WHAT!?)cles of Narnia or whatever. The plus side is you get to see a movie you want and come out to meet your horny wife. The possible is risk, however, is that she does get pretty hot watching Heath Ledger make out with another guy and all of a sudden she's suggesting you invite another guy into the bedroom to, you know, spice things up. Now, if you're down with that, more power to you, if not... you have been warned.

[Flasch186]

Where's Bubba? HE disappeared when he started seeing that the numbers wouldnt bear out his ridiculous theory (which I think is inapplicable) regardless...what he going to feel like when this movie turns a profit and continues to get nominsated for awards? Does that mean America wants to be gay? So ridiculous.

[Flasch186]

Dola:

More Kudos for BROKEBACK
Wednesday December 21 10:05 AM ET

Ang Lee's controversial love story was named the Best Picture of the Year by both the Las Vegas and Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics groups.

By Mark Umbach, FilmStew.com

Brokeback Mountain is at it again. The Ang Lee love story topped the list of movies from two more of this year's film critics associations: this time the awards came from Las Vegas and Dallas-Fort Worth. The film was named the Best Picture of the Year by both critics groups on Monday. In addition to Picture of the Year, Lee was named the Director of the Year by both groups.

ADVERTISEMENT
The Vegas critics thought Brokeback's Heath Ledger put in the best performance by an actor this year, while they went for Reese Witherspoon in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line as the Best Actress of the Year. On the supporting side, Vegas lauded Matt Dillon in Crash as the Best Supporting Actor with Frances McDormand earning Best Supporting Actress of the Year for North Country.

March of the Penguins was the choice for Vegas' Best Documentary. There, Kung Fu Hustle was honored as the choice for foreign language film.

Philip Seymour Hoffman played well in Dallas-Fort Worth as he earned Best Actor kudos from the group for playing the title role in Capote. Transamerica's Felicity Huffman picked up the award as the Best Actress of the Year. Dillon was also honored by Dallas-Fort Worth as the Best Supporting Actor for Crash, but the D-FW group went for Capote's Catherine Keener for Best Supporting Actress.

The group picked Murderball as the year's Best Documentary, and Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now was the group's Best Foreign Language Feature.

As for screenplays, Brokeback also scored with Dallas-Fort Worth with the group giving Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana the honor for their adaptation. Vegas chose Paul Haggis and his Crash as their honoree for Best Screenplay. When it came to animated feature both critics groups picked Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit as their choice for Best Animated Feature.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

Where's Bubba? HE disappeared when he started seeing that the numbers wouldnt bear out his ridiculous theory (which I think is inapplicable) regardless...what he going to feel like when this movie turns a profit and continues to get nominsated for awards? Does that mean America wants to be gay? So ridiculous.

Incredibly ridiculous...

[Desmond]

I wanted to go see this tonight but we don't have any big gay movie theaters here in town.

[WVUFAN]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

Where's Bubba? HE disappeared when he started seeing that the numbers wouldnt bear out his ridiculous theory (which I think is inapplicable) regardless...what he going to feel like when this movie turns a profit and continues to get nominsated for awards? Does that mean America wants to be gay? So ridiculous.

No, it just means the uber-liberal Hollywood (who are the only ones who actually VOTE for Oscars) want to continue their agenda, and giving Oscars to undeserving films are a good way to do it.

[Flasch186]

Originally Posted by WVUFAN

No, it just means the uber-liberal Hollywood (who are the only ones who actually VOTE for Oscars) want to continue their agenda, and giving Oscars to undeserving films are a good way to do it.

oh, so youve seen it? What did you think of it?

and I didnt know the only acclaim that the movie has been getting was from the Oscars...and no where else, no other film festivals, say in Dallas - Fort Worth, most recently.

and your retort doesnt address Bubba's theory.

[WVUFAN]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

oh, so youve seen it? What did you think of it?

I thought Jake stole the show. I chose not to look at the love scene, but overall the movie was a little long, very tragic, and not my cup of tea.

Before you ask, I watched it because I try to watch all the Oscar nominated films, and this'll be nominated based on the subject matter. Jake will get a nom for Best Actor.

[Flasch186]

Originally Posted by WVUFAN

I thought Jake stole the show. I chose not to look at the love scene, but overall the movie was a little long, very tragic, and not my cup of tea.

Before you ask, I watched it because I try to watch all the Oscar nominated films, and this'll be nominated based on the subject matter. Jake will get a nom for Best Actor.

Excellent!! I wouldnt have asked why you watched it...im not asking you why you would go se King Kong. Terrific, so you dont think it should be...oh wait you do think it should be nominated for at least one Oscar? Im glad to see your opinion was based on a film's merit and not some homophobic agenda wherein youre scared that a film about gays might have some effect on children or society moreso than those about serial killers, pedophiles, etc.

[WVUFAN]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

Excellent!! I wouldnt have asked why you watched it...im not asking you why you would go se King Kong. Terrific, so you dont think it should be...oh wait you do think it should be nominated for at least one Oscar? Im glad to see your opinion was based on a film's merit and not some homophobic agenda wherein youre scared that a film about gays might have some effect on children or society moreso than those about serial killers, pedophiles, etc.

I never said that gays might have an effect on children. I said that you can't suspend your disbelief about a movie on gays more than you could about a serial killer who can't be killed.

Yes, I think it should be nominated for an Oscar, Jake Guy... however he spells his name should be nominated. Doesn't mean I liked the subject matter. If you're gonna argue against the film, I believe one should watch it first, which is what I did. It's not my cup of tea, but that's not to say it's not a good film, which it is.

My point is that this film would have been nominated for an award regardless of the quality because of the subject matter. The liberal Hollywood, the same one who didn't acknowledge Passion of the Christ at all because of it's subject matter will go ga-ga over this one.

And, for the record, I'm not defending Bubba's post, just glad someone had the balls to step forward with a politically incorrect viewpoint that ALOT of Americans agree with.

[Flasch186]

since youve seen it I can buy all of what you say outside of comparing it to POTC...which I think was excellent but on its own right NOT Oscar worthy, IMO. Youre entitled to your opinion and for once, it is not ignorant considering you saw the movie.

[Joe Canadian]

Originally Posted by WVUFAN

My point is that this film would have been nominated for an award regardless of the quality because of the subject matter. The liberal Hollywood, the same one who didn't acknowledge Passion of the Christ at all because of it's subject matter will go ga-ga over this one.

Couple of points:

1) Since the film is good, and does deserve the acclaim it is getting... then we'll never actually know if your theory is correct.

2) The Passion was acknowledged by the AMPAS, it got a nomination for best cinematography... if by acknowledged you mean a nomination for best picture, alot of people would say it didn't deserve to be, myself included.

[JW]

Just from a business standpoint, no one should be surprised that the movie has done well in limited release. It has a ready-made audience in big cities. But I don't see how it can do well in wide release because of the subject matter; many people just aren't going to go see the movie. I don't see the audience being much greater than many other indy or 'art' movies. What is its audience, exactly? Who is going to go see it?

Many movies do well in limited release but are never widely released or do poorly when released to the general public. Lately The Great Raid did extremely well in limited release, but it was never put into general release for whatever reasons. At least it is now available on DVD. I just don't see it making much money, but then lots of good movies do poorly and lots of bad movies make tons of money.

[MrBigglesworth]

Originally Posted by JW

Just from a business standpoint, no one should be surprised that the movie has done well in limited release. It has a ready-made audience in big cities. But I don't see how it can do well in wide release because of the subject matter; many people just aren't going to go see the movie. I don't see the audience being much greater than many other indy or 'art' movies. What is its audience, exactly? Who is going to go see it?

Many movies do well in limited release but are never widely released or do poorly when released to the general public. Lately The Great Raid did extremely well in limited release, but it was never put into general release for whatever reasons. At least it is now available on DVD. I just don't see it making much money, but then lots of good movies do poorly and lots of bad movies make tons of money.

Wasn't the movie test-released in Plano, TX, some conservative town where POTC had one of its biggest audiences? I think it did pretty well there, coming in third for the weekend. Not a blockbuster, but you know, pretty good for an 'art' movie.

[JW]

Originally Posted by MrBigglesworth

Wasn't the movie test-released in Plano, TX, some conservative town where POTC had one of its biggest audiences? I think it did pretty well there, coming in third for the weekend. Not a blockbuster, but you know, pretty good for an 'art' movie.

Plano, TX is a big suburb of DALLAS. Plano is where one of the schools banned red and green decorations from the 'winter holiday' party. When I read that Plano was used as an example of the movie doing well in a conservative area, I got a good laugh out of that. Everyone interested in the film in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex had an opportunity to see it there.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by JW

Just from a business standpoint, no one should be surprised that the movie has done well in limited release. It has a ready-made audience in big cities. But I don't see how it can do well in wide release because of the subject matter; many people just aren't going to go see the movie. I don't see the audience being much greater than many other indy or 'art' movies. What is its audience, exactly? Who is going to go see it?

Many movies do well in limited release but are never widely released or do poorly when released to the general public. Lately The Great Raid did extremely well in limited release, but it was never put into general release for whatever reasons. At least it is now available on DVD. I just don't see it making much money, but then lots of good movies do poorly and lots of bad movies make tons of money.

I think this is right. I think the film will do better than most 'art' house flicks, but by no means will be anything close to a blockbuster. No way. Some of the box office returns will be because of "controversial" subject matter (), some will be because of the awards buzz (see: WVUFan above), and, maybe, some will be because of, uh, ladies like Pilotman's wife want to see hot guys kissing (I, uh, guess...).

The only reason there has been any discussion of the film's box office performance is because certain people seem to think (ridiculously so) that if this one movie performs poorly at the box office (relative to what, I don't know) it is America condeming the gay lifestyle. Or, as one of more "enlightened" FOFcers said "Well America has spoken, Brokeback Mountain made approx, 2.4 million in its opening weekend. Apparently two faggots going at it wasnt as big as a great idea as the studio hoped eh?"

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by JW

Plano, TX is a big suburb of DALLAS. Plano is where one of the schools banned red and green decorations from the 'winter holiday' party. When I read that Plano was used as an example of the movie doing well in a conservative area, I got a good laugh out of that. Everyone interested in the film in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex had an opportunity to see it there.

So, JW has made it clear, he really does only get his information from O'Reilly, World Net Daily, and the like. Really, the War on Christmas story is quite silly and full of lies (including many of the allegations made against Plano).

[John Galt]

dola,

This survey says Plano is the 5th most conservative city in the country based on voting patterns. But don't let the facts get in the way of your argument.

hxxp://www.govpro.com/ASP/ViewArticle.asp?strArticleId=106124

[Desnudo]

'Brokeback Mountain' Tops Globes Favorites - Steers and Queers Category

Link

[Honolulu_Blue]

Here's a very thoughtful and long (and positive) review of the film. The site www.pajiba.com tends to have very good movie reviews. The reivew deals with the movie as a movie as opposed to focusing solely on any perceived agenda (the gay aspect of the movie). If you have the time and inclination here you go...

http://www.pajiba.com/brokeback-mountain.htm

Brokeback Mountain / Jeremy C. Fox

For a lot of people I know, both gay and straight, Brokeback Mountain is the most anticipated film of the year. Since it was first announced in 2003, it’s generally been known as “that gay cowboy movie”— the film in which, for the first time, two handsome Hollywood stars on the rise would appear in an honest-to-God gay romance, the movie that would give us both the love that dare not speak its name and the sex scenes that Tom Hanks (in Philadelphia) and Colin Farrell (in both A Home at the End of the World and Alexander) dare not shoot — but calling Brokeback Mountain “that gay cowboy movie” is about as reductive as calling The Godfather “that mafia movie.” It contains aspects of Westerns, gay coming-of-age films, and romantic melodramas, but to apply a facile label would be to underestimate its majestic sweep and its heartening and heartrending depth. It is, at its base, a film about the conflict between what a man is and what he needs.

The movie’s source is the final story in Annie Proulx’s book Close Range: Wyoming Stories, a collection of narratives about difficult lives lived in difficult circumstances by people who mostly don’t expect better. Her characters tend to be of two types: the dreamers who either buy into the romance of the West or can’t wait to escape it and the realists who accept their lot with stoic resilience. Brokeback Mountain has one of each: Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), starry-eyed and caught up in heroic myths, and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) a pragmatist who just lives his life the only way he knows how. In outline, the film is simple: Boy gets boy; boy loses boy; boy gets and loses boy over and over again across a lifetime — but there’s a whole world of suffering and grief in all that getting and losing, a permanent sense of loss, of possibilities forever forestalled, happiness perpetually found and then denied, lessons learned too late.

Over the past year or so, Heath Ledger has been involved in a project of rejiggering his career, eschewing the fluffy, audience-pleasing “blond-haired bimbo” roles that made him famous and saying fuck you to the Hollywood establishment, taking flaky character parts or leads that other young actors considered too risky. Here he confirms a suspicion that I developed after seeing Lords of Dogtown last summer and realizing that he’d played a sizable role without my ever recognizing him — he’s a startlingly gifted actor. He’s playing a character who’s superficially a throwback to the days of John Wayne and Gary Cooper, and he outwardly embodies the quintessential Western hero, squinting his eyes into black creases and murmuring his words through drawn lips, with an accent that’s a little bit Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade and a little bit Sam Elliott in everything (though with a lighter timbre). But Ennis doesn’t have it in him to be an icon. Having lost his parents as a child, he was early prepared for a hard life full of disappointments; he’s uncomplaining and compliant, willing to work any shit-job he can get, willing to perform any task unquestioningly.

While Ennis begins the film shambling like a young man whom life has already beaten, Jack struts around like a stud horse, intoxicated with the idea of being a rodeo star and proving his worth to his disapproving father and, by extension, the world. Gyllenhaal’s performance at first seems a little out of place; everyone around him (at this point, essentially Ledger, Randy Quaid, and some sheep) seems entirely at ease and unactorish, but on a second viewing I realized that what I was watching wasn’t Gyllenhaal’s performance — it was Jack’s. Jack is constantly trying to fill the role of Western hero, trying to impress; when we first see him, waiting with Ennis outside Joe Aguirre’s trailer-office, he leans against his truck in an exaggeratedly casual posture, with a “hey, cowboy” leer. The pose seems tentative here, but when he strikes it again later, after he knows he’s won Ennis, it’s triumphant. Unlike Ennis, Jack knows what he wants and is willing to go after it, though he may be only a little better at understanding it.

Ennis and Jack first meet in Signal, Wyoming, in 1963, when they take summer jobs tending sheep on Brokeback Mountain for Joe Aguirre (Quaid). Up on Brokeback, they endure harsh weather, minimal provisions, and predator attacks on the sheep, and gradually, over a period of days and weeks, they reveal themselves to each other and become close. When a night of too much whiskey and too much cold confines them to the same small tent, Jack, who’s clearly had it on his mind for a while, makes his move and they consummate their relationship. Early reports on the film suggested that the physical affection between Ennis and Jack would be downplayed; that perhaps they wouldn’t even kiss onscreen, but this encounter is treated no more or less gingerly than their later encounters with women. There’s no ambiguity about the sex, no discreet fade to black, but neither is it played for titillation or shock value. The connection between Ennis and Jack is powerful, even elemental, and sex is what cements it, a factor it would be dishonest to exclude, but there’s far more to it than that. Ennis gives Jack the tenderness and affection that he craves, offers him the acceptance that his father denied him, but what Jack gives Ennis is understanding; he’s the one person in the world around whom Ennis can drop his guard, though even with Jack it falls only so far. But what this relationship means to them, the powerful hold they have over each other, is something they have little means to express. Like many men, their feelings come out most clearly through aggression. The physical violence between Ennis and Jack is more than just a metaphor for the emotional violence of their connection, it’s the only way these inarticulate men are able to express the strength of their feelings. Though it’s tacitly clear in their every interaction, and though they often speak of the grip “this thing” has on them, throughout the film’s two and a quarter hours neither dares to say the word “love.”

Like many a homosexual encounter, theirs begins in drunkenness, when their inhibitions are lowered, and like many people after their first homosexual encounter, Ennis would like to believe that it’s a fluke, no big deal. “This is a one-shot thing we got goin’ on here. … You know I ain’t queer,” he tells Jack the next afternoon, hoping and perhaps still believing that it’s true. Ennis plays the “masculine” role and tries to preserve his image of himself as a man. He tries to separate sex from emotion, to convince himself that Jack is no more to him than a vehicle for his sexual drive, a partner better suited to the purpose than his hand but only marginally preferable to the sheep. Initially he can’t admit to himself that he’s getting anything more from Jack than a sexual release; when Jack wants to be treated as a lover, an equal, to be kissed and to be held, Ennis is terrified of the implicit suggestion that indeed he is queer, of surrendering his masculine prerogative, of assuming an ambiguous role. But need and regard for Jack overpower his fears and he relents. When the sheep-tending job is ending and they must separate, the full force of Ennis’ emotion comes down on him and he’s wrecked.

Ennis returns home and marries his sweetheart Alma (Michelle Williams), attempting to return to his old life with little success. Separated from Jack, he tries to make a Jack of Alma, wrestling with her in the snow as he’d wrestled with Jack up on Brokeback, too rough for a woman half his size, assigning her the sexual role Jack had assumed eagerly but which she accepts with grim marital devotion. Ennis becomes a caring father and he loves Alma as best he can, but his unfulfilled desires isolate him from his family. As the years pass, he increasingly draws away from them.

Jack moves to Texas for rodeoing but has little success. Though he’s drawn to men and looks for opportunities for hookups, he’s impressed when he meets a pretty young barrel-racer named Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway), though it’s suggested that her family’s wealth may have as much to do with her appeal as her personal charms. They marry and settle in Childress, Texas, where they both work for Lureen’s father, a big-time farm-equipment dealer. After four years have passed since that summer on the mountain, Jack finally heads back up to Wyoming and finds Ennis. When they meet again, their passion overtakes them, and they resume their relationship, planning several hunting or fishing trips a year so that they can be together, Jack driving 14-hour stretches at every opportunity to spend time alone with Ennis.

Ledger and Gyllenhaal inhabit their characters with powerful realism. As the years pass, the actors age subtly but persuasively. Jack grows a Dennis Weaver moustache and develops a beer gut; Ennis, who seemed old even when he was young, changes only in the hardening of his face, his skin growing more dry and taut, getting crepey around the eyes. The makeup artists have done great work here, but it’s Ledger and Gyllenhaal who have to carry these scenes off, and they do so admirably. Even in the latter part of the film, when Ledger is playing father to a young woman who can’t be more than six or seven years his junior, you don’t question it.

For those who care about a film adaptation’s faithfulness to its literary forerunner, the situation of Brokeback Mountain’s production — adapting a brief but thematically rich and emotionally resonant story — is perhaps ideal. The nature of film — its reliance on the visual and the active over the contemplative, its necessary brevity — makes it almost impossible to do full justice to a novel, but a short story doesn’t make such demands on a screenwriter. Rather than reducing or eliminating themes and events, he can use what was in the original and expand upon it, taking ideas that were only hinted at and exploring them at greater length, bringing out new meanings and enriching existing ones. This is what Brokeback Mountain’s screenwriters, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, have done; they know that Proulx’s story wasn’t broke, and they don’t try to fix it. They simply take it and allow it to sprawl out, to fill up the edges of the film with carefully observed details. McMurtry, a Texan and author of both contemporary and period novels and screenplays about the West, understands this world as well as anyone might; Ossana has lived much of her life in New Mexico and Arizona and has collaborated with McMurtry on novels and screenplays for over a decade. Their elaborations on Proulx’s story are keyed perfectly to her pitch. They’ve made the chronology more linear — an esthetically neutral decision in this case — but nothing of substance is missing, while some useful context and character motivations are added. They expand the story into other points of view, strengthening Proulx’s insights, giving a greater sense of the impact that Ennis and Jack’s love has on those around them, and adding such small but meaningful touches as a brown paper sack offered at just the right moment.

This is the first film Ang Lee has directed since Hulk, and he seems to have learned from that considerable misfire. He’s playing to his strengths here, and they are remarkable. Like many of the canniest observers of American life, Lee is an outsider who has adopted the American culture and who continues to see our society with a clearer eye than we may have ourselves. A native of Taiwan who has lived much of his adult life in the United States, Lee is adept at immersing himself in new cultures (New York Times critic Stephen Holden once called him “a kind of cinematic anthropologist”), recreating the world of his characters and examining it with a thoughtful, critical eye without resorting to parody. Lee has sometimes been accused of being too clinical, of keeping his subjects at an objective distance, but there’s none of that here. His empathy with these characters — each of them trapped in his or her own particular way — is palpable, yet he never tips over into sentimentality or lugubriousness.

Lee and his cinematographer, the versatile Rodrigo Prieto (21 Grams, Alexander), capture the feeling that runs through all of Proulx’s Wyoming stories, a sense of the permanence of the land and the transience of individual human lives. Their Wyoming (played with picture-postcard beauty by Alberta, Canada) is a painterly landscape of craggy mountains; rich, verdant grasslands; and a gorgeous, endless sky above, that serves as half of a metaphor for the characters’ dual lives; it’s the idyllic Eden where Ennis and Jack first meet and later find temporary escape, the place they can be together and be themselves without fear of judgment, contrasted against the constricted feel of the dusty, squalid cow towns and tacky, middle-class, southwestern suburbs where they spend most of their lives.

Lee takes the classic contrast between nature and civilization and uses it in a new way, as an implicit argument that the love between Ennis and Jack is a natural thing subverted by the arbitrary rules and definitions of manhood of their society. This might sound pretentious, and in many other hands it could be, but the beauty of Lee’s technique is its simplicity, its directness and lack of pretense, its ability to suggest without overplaying. He’s assisted by the somber elegance of Gustavo Santaolalla’s guitar-and-fiddle score, which evokes Country-Western music without quite entering its twangy domain and fits the moods Lee creates without overselling them.

Brokeback Mountain bears some similarities to Lee’s 1993 film The Wedding Banquet, in which a gay Chinese man living in New York with his lover must get himself a nice Chinese wife to appease his traditional parents back in Taiwan. Lee isn’t gay, but in films like The Wedding Banquet, Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon he’s shown an understanding of gay men and straight women — the disenfranchised of patriarchies — that’s greater than just about any other straight male director I can think of; as much as I admire Gus Van Sant (who is gay and who at one point expressed interest in directing Brokeback Mountain) I can’t imagine anyone doing this story better. As far as I know, none of the principals involved in the production is gay, yet they’ve constructed a story of love between men that surpasses all but the greatest films made by gay filmmakers, such as Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho. Lee’s fascinated with people whose desires are thwarted by the strictures of society and the sacrifices demanded by tradition. And, in America, no tradition is more venerable than the notion of the laconic, stalwart western hero, the icon that Jack wishes he were and that Ennis falls to by dint of circumstance. It’s part of Ennis’ appeal to Jack that he embodies the cowboy archetype Jack aspires to.

Lee’s aware that he’s playing with myth, but he doesn’t muck about with it capriciously. Westerns are always about the end of a way of life, and Lee seems ambivalent about the changes that time has wrought. If Ennis and Jack were 20 years old in 2003 rather than 1963, their relationship would be easier but the West they knew would be gone. Brokeback Mountain uses the West as a backdrop, but it’s not structured like a Western, and it’s not intended as a criticism of the genre like McCabe and Mrs. Miller or Unforgiven, films that took the Western hero and made him either a buffoon or a sociopath; rather it’s a film that employs selected genre elements for their resonances, their associations. The mythic quality of the landscape and the lonesome figures moving through it only serves to emphasize the difficulty of these men playing the roles they’ve been given, the impossibility of living up to a myth.

The filmmakers have the guts to allow for the moral ambiguity of Ennis and Jack’s situation and explore the toll their secret takes on their families. No matter how powerful or natural their desires, by following them they’re hurting the women they married in their misdirected search for the passion they find only with each other. While I’d enjoyed Michelle Williams’ performances in small roles in recent films like Imaginary Heroes and The Baxter, until now my concept of her was essentially “that girl from ‘Dawson’s Creek.’” Those days are over. Her performance here is so deeply felt, authentic, and adult that it wipes away all my preconceived notions about her — not to mention blowing her former co-star Katie Holmes, whose recent performances haven’t strayed far from the Creek, right out of the water. When Williams’ Alma first witnesses her husband embracing a man, kissing him, her face expresses about 10 kinds of alarm, confusion, heartbreak, and horror. And Anne Hathaway, who plays Jack’s wife Lureen, might have forever been Mia Thermopolis to me but for her role here. She’s given less to play than Williams, but she makes the most of every moment. Her silent triumph when Jack finally stands up to her bullying father is exhilarating, and the slight catch in her throat that disturbs her frosty demeanor when she speaks to Ennis for the first and last time, the subtle suggestion that she’s finally learned her husband’s secret, completely transforms the way we see her character. Even the actors in roles that count for little more than cameos, such as the tiny part played by an unrecognizable Anna Faris, or the slightly larger role given to Linda Cardellini, hit home. It’s as if Lee had been asked to prove that every B-list actress in Hollywood under 30 had unplumbed depths. There’s not a performer in the film who doesn’t stretch (well, maybe Randy Quaid, but it’s nice to see him in a respectable role again), and there’s not one who fails.

Lee is aware of his film’s place in the world, that no one will approach it as just a romance and that much more attention will be given it than if the actors were nobodies, and his approach is, I think, the best possible one, low-key and matter-of-fact, making the story feel genuine and simple and true. Brokeback Mountain is a film of great subtlety and precise observation, a film for which the best descriptors are words like “rich” and “authentic” and, possibly, “perfect.” After three viewings and some careful consideration, I’m damned if I can find a significant flaw. There are one or two lines of dialogue that I might change, and Gyllenhaal’s early scenes made more sense to me upon the second viewing, but these are quibbles. In a medium where the important decisions are almost always dictated by commerce rather than art, Brokeback Mountain is as close to perfection as we are likely to get.

[Whar]

Originally Posted by Bubba Wheels

Talk Soup says the per-screen numbers is about a whole whopping $100,000 per-viewing.

I got a kick out of this since it is one of the highest grossing movie in limited release ever. To put the $100,000 per theater average in perspective Passion of the Christ, a phenonamally successly film, had its highest average theater gross on its 4th day of release. It was $10,870. To be fair that was in ~3,800 compared to Brokeback's 5, however $100,000 is an amazing amount of money to average per screen.

If Brokeback held that average in similar wide distributed release it would broke Passion of the Christ's total domestic gross in a single day. Obviously it will not but trying to demean Brokeback already strong success with a 'whole whopping $100,000' seems remarkably obtuse.